


eloi, eloi

by Askance



Series: Mashiach [13]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Blood, Character Death, Crucifixion, M/M, Mild Implied Incest, Religious Content, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Self-Inflicted Stigmata
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-01
Updated: 2013-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-30 00:10:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693110
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean says, <em>Don’t do it for them. You don’t owe them a damn thing.</em> An expansion of the crucifixion scene in <a href="http://whiskyandoldspice.tumblr.com/post/43107819855/4-dean-sees-the-first-stained-glass-window-in-a">"Emmaus."</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	eloi, eloi

Dean says, _Don’t do it for them. You don’t owe them a damn thing._

_I’m not doing it for them,_ Sam says. _They were sent to do this for me._

His hand is bleeding where it rests on Dean’s shoulder, and Dean looks at him.

He thinks of the one thing that never made sense to him in the brief fleeting moments of his childhood where he considered the heavy book in every motel room in the country: what kind of Father would give their Son up like that? Condemn him to all that pain, all that agony—for what?

He imagines angels swooping and drifting like rainbows over the screaming crowd at Pilate’s gate, whispering _crucify him_ into the ears of the multitude, darting up through the echoes again, humming hallelujahs. Ensuring the death. What of it? What of it?

He thinks, _no, Sammy. I’m not God. I can’t do this._

The people mill and bump and sway, beating their breasts and their heads, moaning, wailing, waiting, their pale contorted hands searching out into the dark as if to tear Sam’s heart from his chest, and he feels Sam’s fingertips slide—drift across his jaw, touch his chin, turn his face, and he looks as deeply into his brother’s eyes as he possibly can.

He wants to say, _I was more of a father to you than anyone, Dad—Bobby—God—more than anyone ever was._

_I’m not Abraham, Sammy. Don’t be Isaac. Is it worth it?_

But there is nothing he can say and he knows it, knows it like he knows the sun will rise tomorrow on the holy carnage, and Sam’s eyes are begging him— _cut the last tie and let me leap again. It’s all I’ve ever wanted._

Once, he saved the world. Now, Dean supposes, it only follows that he will redeem it.

_You’re no Messiah,_ he whispers, one last clutch at straws.

_No,_ Sam replies, and his hand on Dean’s shoulder begins to shake. _Not yet._

Dean watches him begin to walk, hesitant, limping, his bare wounded feet pinched with gravel and dust, the stark lines of his body outlined against the moon, and the wicked faithful begin to chant and groan, raising a steady cacophany, and Sam—Sam opens his arms as if to embrace them, and Dean draws a shuddering breath.

They fall on him like animals. Hands emerge from the shadow mass and grip his arms, his shoulders, his sides, yanking and pulling him into the throng, and Dean starts forward, heart leaping as Sam vanishes into their scrabbling howling enormity, shrieking faces lifted to the sky. They push Sam forward, pull him along, shoving his head and his body down and Dean follows, can only follow, _must_ follow. He lets himself be snatched up by the tide, these people—only days ago they would have been laying palm branches at the entrance to the city for his brother and now they scream blasphemies, spit in Sam’s face, and Dean doesn’t know what they want. He doesn’t know why this is happening. He can feel the whole world tipping backwards under his feet, Jerusalem, the governor, the people clamouring for the death of their King. He wonders who Barabbas will be. He wonders who will share Sam’s place on Calvary. For just a moment Dean sinks to his knees and lets out a sob that seems to tear his throat apart.

Someone hauls him up and shoves him out of the way, and he can only just see Sam stumbling through the trees towards the broken ruin of some backwoods church rising up out of the forest, his feet scraping and sliding through the dirt and dampening it dark. A voice shouts and the herd of the faceless swarms around him, hands, hands unimaginable in number, gripping the back of Sam’s shirt and tearing it from his body, pushing him to his knees, his hands slamming down for desperate hold on a tree stump lurching from the forest floor, and Dean knows what’s coming but he can’t move, can’t understand. If he could only understand what this means he could stop it.

They whip Sam with switches from the trees and the sticks sing as they cleave the air.

Dean shrinks on the sidelines, hands hovering near his face as if to shield himself from what he sees, his eyes hot with tears, and he wants to wail _no, no, this is my baby brother, he is so good and kind and beautiful and he is more than his body and blood—why are you doing this? Why are you hurting him? Why are you killing my Sammy, my brother, why?_

Perhaps he does wail it. No one hears him. No one answers.

Sam hunches over the stump with his arms spread long over its face, shoulders slumped and shaking, his back a cacophany of red bleeding stripes, and when someone yanks his hair back and pushes the ring of barbed wire down over his brow Dean makes a noise he never thought himself capable of, a sound like despair itself.

Sam turns his beaten head and seeks him out with bleary eyes and Dean cannot look away.

The people pull Sam up, slap his face and spit on him, like dancers on a stage, murmuring in tongues, circling their broken saviour. _They know not what they do,_ Dean whispers to himself, desperately. _They know not what they do._ There is a madness to their movements, a frenzy. Bacchanal. Cruel.

The fervor rises and rises and Sam falls, three times, to his knees in the dirt and the dead leaves, as they carry him like a current to the cross, planted into the ground like a tree in front of the crumbling stoop of the broken steeple, and now, now Dean hurtles his way to the front, wants nothing more than to cover Sam with his body and kiss his forehead, comfort him, heal him, love him, take him away from all this unknowable mystery, this death march for the holy, and he breaks away just long enough to fall into the dirt at Sam’s side, and Sam lifts his head, his poor beautiful face streaked with blood and silver wire, and reaches up with one blood-covered hand as if to lay it on Dean’s brow in blessing.

Dean kisses him, pricks his fingers on the crown of thorns, heaves a broken sob into his brother’s mouth and for a moment, just a moment, holds him tight on the ground, envelops him whole in his arms without concern for blood or pain or the ululation that surrounds them—feels Sam clutch momentarily at his back with fingers that no longer work.

Panicked, he whispers into Sam’s neck that he loves him, _love you, I love you, Sammy, I love you—I won’t leave you. I won’t leave you._

And then Sam is being torn away, the cross lowered, what remains of his clothes torn away until his body shines pale under the sickle moon, and Dean is covered in his blood, kneeling in the dirt, his hands upturned upon his thighs.

_Crucify him._ There are no angels gambling their work tonight. These are the faithful. Here is their King.

With every blow of the hammer, every juddering slip of the nails into the holes Sam has carved himself into his hands, his feet, Dean feels his heart begin to die.

Sam doesn’t scream. He lifts his face to the sky and weeps, silently, body shaking, and gasps when they lift the crucifix, drop it into the hole, fall away like prowling creatures, descend into the hush, to look up at him silhouetted against the sky.

_Please, someone, please,_ Dean wants to shout. _Make me understand._

_Make me understand._

_God help me, I do not understand._

The people mutter and jeer and wait, and wait. They don’t explain. The madness dies in them and they stare up at the thing they’ve done as if realising at last that they have done it.

Dean crawls, wet with Sam’s blood, to the foot of the cross, the place upon which his brother’s feet sit, fastened to the wood, and slumps there.

He doesn’t need to understand, he realises, suddenly, with all the painful clarity of a dagger worming its way into his heart. He can hear Sam’s breath shuddering in his body, the soft sounds of his crying, like a little boy—like a little child who does not understand the pain they are in but knows it must be borne.

Dean reaches up—moves up—kneels, and bends his head, and kisses Sam’s feet, places his lips against the nail, and when he looks up Sam is looking down at him, looking down at him as if Dean is the only living soul in the universe, and Dean remembers this part of the story. The woman who waits the whole horror out, Mary of Magdala, most faithful, most beloved. Kissing her Lord’s feet. Silent and strong, the presence on the hill. Gazing up in adoration.

Sam cannot speak. Dean lays his head down against Sam’s pinioned feet and closes his eyes, and falls into the hush. He will wait.

It is finished.

**Author's Note:**

> This series belongs in part to Casey, whose contributions can be read [here](http://whiskyandoldspice.tumblr.com/fanfiction). This is an expansion on the crucifixion scene in "[Pilgrimage."](http://whiskyandoldspice.tumblr.com/post/43107819855/4-dean-sees-the-first-stained-glass-window-in-a)
> 
> On the cross, Jesus is said to have called out, "Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani?"--that is, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"


End file.
